Privacy

Effective July 8, 2026. This explains what Talk the Town collects, who it's shared with, and the choices you have. Plain language, no dark patterns.

You can play the whole single-player game with no account and no personal information — progress saves in your browser. Some features (an optional account, playing alongside other people, chat, and voice chat) do involve servers and other players; those are covered below so you can decide what to use.

Your progress & saves

Your progress (places visited, conversations, vocabulary, missions, and things you place in your garden/house) is stored in your browser's localStorage on your device. If you create an optional account (see below), a copy of that same save is also stored in our database (Supabase) so it can sync across your devices. We do not sell your data or use it for advertising.

Optional accounts

You can sign in with an email address (password or a one-time magic link) to sync your progress across devices. If you do, we store your email and your save data via Supabase (auth + database). You never need an account to play. You can delete your account and its cloud data from Settings → Account, and you can reset or export your progress there as well.

Playing with other people

When other players are in the same place, the game shares a small amount of live data so you can see each other: your display name and your position and movements in the world, sent through Supabase Realtime to others nearby. By default your name is an anonymous label (e.g. “학생-a1b2”); if you set a display name it is shown to other players. Don't use your real name or anything you wouldn't want other players to see.

Text chat

Messages you send in proximity chat are delivered to other players near you in the world. Keep in mind that anything you type is seen by strangers. We apply basic filtering, but chat is a public space between players. You can block a player from Settings, and report abuse from the voice panel.

Voice chat

If you opt in to proximity voice chat, your microphone audio is streamed directly, peer-to-peer (WebRTC), to the other players near you while you hold push-to-talk. We do not record or store voice audio on our servers. Two things to know: (1) a direct peer connection means the players you talk with may be able to observe your IP address (this is how WebRTC works); (2) when a direct connection can't be established, audio may be relayed through Cloudflare's TURN service to complete the call. Voice chat is off until you explicitly join, is gated behind a 16-or-older confirmation, and is push-to-talk only (the mic transmits only while you hold the button).

Your microphone (pronunciation)

Separately from voice chat, when you tap Say it to practice pronunciation, your spoken audio is sent to Microsoft Azure Speech to score how closely you matched the target phrase. If Azure isn't configured, the game falls back to your browser's built-in speech recognition, which sends the audio to your browser vendor (e.g. Chrome → Google). The recording scores that one attempt and is not stored by us. The mic is never opened until you tap to speak, and the rest of the game works without it.

Reports

If you report a player, we store a record (the reported display name, a reason, the place, and — if you're signed in — your account id) so we can review conduct. Reports are kept for moderation and are not shown to other players.

Analytics

We use Vercel Analytics to understand aggregate usage (page views, performance), and we record anonymous learning events (e.g. “a conversation was completed”) keyed to a random device id generated on your device — not to your identity. This helps us improve the game.

Generated speech

The Korean/Japanese voices you hear are pre-generated audio clips (made with ElevenLabs during development). No audio of you is sent to generate them.

Third parties we use

Vercel (hosting + analytics), Supabase (accounts, save storage, realtime multiplayer), Microsoft Azure (pronunciation scoring), Cloudflare (voice-chat relay when needed), and ElevenLabs (pre-generated audio). Each processes only the data described in its section above.

Keeping, deleting & exporting your data

Reset or export your local progress any time from Settings → Saved progress. If you have an account, you can delete it and its cloud save from Settings → Account, or email us to request deletion. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes the local save.

Children

Talk the Town is not directed to children under 13 (or the age of digital consent in your country). Voice and text chat connect you with strangers and are intended for players 16 and older; the microphone and voice features send audio to third parties. If you are under the age of consent where you live, please get a parent or guardian's permission before signing in or using chat/voice, and don't share personal information with other players. If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Contact & changes

Questions, requests, or abuse reports: hello@talkthetown.com. We'll update this page as the product changes and revise the effective date above.

See also our Terms and Community Guidelines.